Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

Another pollster finds an incremental movement to Labor, and gives Bill Shorten an improved set of personal ratings.

The latest fortnightly result from Essential Research follows Newspoll in recording a one-point move to Labor, who now lead 53-47 on two-party preferred. As reported by The Guardian, the primary votes have the Coalition down a point to 37%, Labor up a point to 38%, the Greens down a point to 8% (their weakest result in any poll since September 2016) and One Nation up a point to 7%. The pollster’s leadership ratings (which they normally do monthly, but this is the first set since January) have Scott Morrison steady on 43% approval and up two on disapproval to 41%, Bill Shorten up three to 38% and down three to 44%, and Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister at 44-31, compared with 42-30 last time.

Other findings relate to climate change and asylum seekers. On the former cont, 62% express belief in climate change caused by human activity, and 51% say Australia is not doing enough to address it. On the latter, 52% believed the government was acting out of genuine concern in reopening Christmas Island while 48% said it was a political ploy (suggesting there was no uncommitted option, which would be unusual for Essential). Also featured was an occasion suite of questions on best party to handle various issues, which seems to have produced typical results, with the Coalition stronger on broader protection and economic management and Labor stronger on the environment, wages, health and education, as well as housing affordability. The full report should be with us later today.

UPDATE: Full report here. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1089.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.
View all posts by William Bowe

OL Bill Shorten on tomorrow's #Strike4Climate: "Kids are allowed to have opinions" but says "ideally" they would take action "after school hours or on weekends".— Stephanie Peatling (@srpeatling) March 14, 2019

*WHAT DO WE WANT*"renewable energy but not too much and also massive new coal mines and fracking and offshore gas extraction and new LNG refineries"*WHEN DO WE WANT IT*"ideally after school hours and on weekends"— Scott Ludlam (@Scottludlam) March 14, 2019

this limp blancmange is the best argument so far for making sure we elect a strong, diverse, pissed-off crossbench in both houses. we can't afford to burn this morrison debacle to the ground only to be stuck with "after school hours" mediocrity for a decade.— Scott Ludlam (@Scottludlam) March 14, 2019

Federal and state government cooperation over the disability royal commission is threatening to break down, with state Labor ministers accusing the Morrison government of playing politics with the inquiry.

The Morrison government released a draft of the terms of reference for the royal commission on Wednesday and opened a two week consultation period.

But the terms of reference prompted almost immediate criticism from Labor state ministers who argue the timeframe is too short and four weeks are needed.

In a letter to Social Services Minister Paul Fletcher, the state disability ministers say the federal government has “reneged” on a “unanimous agreement” reached at a meeting last week that two weeks for consultation was “deeply inadequate”.

The Greens have been announcing for three decades. They are announcing now. They announce that they are announcing. They will announce for another thirty years. It does not matter what they announce because they will never turn an announcement into substance.

Just because there is spare capacity and unmet demand in the economy doesn’t mean that crude aggregate measures can efficiently unearth the missed opportunities.

One of the central recommendations of the MMT scholarship is that the currency issuing government use targeted labour management to maintain full employment with price stability, NOT aggregate demand management (aka “pump priming” or generalized stimulus programs).

In a generalized stimulus program the government is paying market wages and is competing with the private sector for real resources, which can bid up prices.

With target labour management, the government focuses its spending on employing labour that the private sector isn’t using.

The Job Guarantee is the policy mechanism to ensure that the government’s spending rises and falls automatically in response to the private sector’s demand for labour. When the private sector’s demand for labour goes up (because the economy is recovering or booming), workers leave the JG workforce for higher paid jobs in the private sector, and government spending on the JG automatically shrinks. When the private sector’s demand for labour falls (because the economy is in recession), workers lose private sector jobs and take JG jobs instead, which means that the JG workforce automatically increases, and government spending on the JG automatically increases.

Bear in mind that the critiques of MMT that you are reading in the media at the moment are written by people who are relying on heavily distorted and deficient second-hand accounts of what MMT scholars actually say. People like Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, Ken Rogoff etc obviously haven’t read much if any of the peer-reviewed literature by the core MMT scholars, who include these folks:

In the last week Fink from the Fund Manager Black Rock has described MMT as “garbage”

Black Rock are a fairly ordinary fund manager. Their performance across all asset classes isn’t much better than Vanguard in the same classes, and Vanguard is purely an index tracker. Black Rock, for all their “expertise”, don’t do any better than keeping up with the relevant indices. Vanguard are lot cheaper on “management” fees as well.

The Gs use the announcement of their dental policy to sledge Labor. This is not a dental policy. It is a continuation of anti-Labor campaigning by the Liblings. 24/7, 52/52…the Gs campaign against Labor.

The Greens have been announcing for three decades. They are announcing now. They announce that they are announcing. They will announce for another thirty years. It does not matter what they announce because they will never turn an announcement into substance.

The Greens have been announcing for three decades. They are announcing now. They announce that they are announcing. They will announce for another thirty years. It does not matter what they announce because they will never turn an announcement into substance.

The Greens are the Great Announcers.

Boerwar effectively asserts that ONLY Labor and Liberal are permitted to release public policy.

Sprocket_ says:
Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 3:16 pm
Sky News understands Craig Laundy has told his colleagues he will not contest his marginal Sydney seat of Reid at the next election. Mr Laundy, who was one of Malcolm Turnbull’s staunchest supporters, reportedly told Prime Minister Scott Morrison of his decision to quit politics on Friday. The back-bencher’s decision to quit comes after a slew of high profile Coalition MPs, including Julie Bishop and Christopher Pyne, announced their retirement from politics at the next federal poll.

–
There is strong moderate flavour in the Coalition departure lounge going back to Brandis, Hockey and so on. So LOTO becomes more vexed and important. Dutton is stuck with Dawson like a wild pig in the headlights. My source tells me Page and Dawson were in the gone column weeks ago.

No surprise then that Potatoe Head has had a Damascus road conversion to anti- coal against the views of nearly all the LNP Parliamentarians and Executive. He will not be missed.

The Liblings continually set out to poison the well for Labor. This is their one true gig.
Not that you’re obsessed or anything.

The Liblings publish, others critique. This is ‘announcement’ is an absolutely classic example of Libling propaganda. It is not a policy. It is dressed up as policy. But it is really a blame-Labor trope.

The Liblings are a Labor-spoiling gizmo. That’s what they do. They’ve never done anything else.

Let’s remember that according to recent blog posts by Bill Mitchell, the size of the JG workforce at the trough of the business cycle might only be about 25 percent bigger than what it is at the peak of the business cycle. That is the extent of fluctuation of the JG workforce envisioned by the macroeconomic modelling carried out by the core MMT scholars. This means that the JG is only supposed to stabilise prices and create jobs at the margin; it is not supposed to be the mainstay of the economy.

The mainstream public sector is currently a shadow of what it ought to be. It has been gutted by four decades of outsourcing, privatisation, and corporatization.

Revitalising the regular public sector has to be a big part of a progressive social and economic reform platform.

imacca says:
Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 2:44 pm
ok guys. I have been maintaining the opinion that the chances of an ALP win in the NSW election are pretty slim. That said i have not a lot of interest of knowledge on NSW state politics, me Federal focused.

——————

Like with Territory , state and federal elections , the libs/nats are very very unlikely to win or be retained with a combined primary of 40% or below

Where? I haven’t seen one critique of the dental policy since it was posted.

Just a bunch of same-old tired criticisms of the Greens for daring to exist, being passed off now as if they’re some sort of policy critique. Kind of pointless, as I doubt the Greens are going to spontaneously stop existing. And definitely not a valid critique of policy.

The Greens are, obviously, entitled to announce policies. Others are just as entitled to point out that in the real world, they have no chance of implementing their policy unless either their policy gains the support of a major party, who will then do the hard yards of implementing it while the Greens take credit for it, or they increase their vote dramatically. The first scenario happens from time to time. The second scenario appears extremely unlikely given that the Greens vote is flat lining. In fact, a quick look at the top of this thread makes this very clear; the latest Essential gives the Greens their lowest result in any poll since September 2016. This is not surprising. Voters want real change and they will get that from Labor.

On the Potatoe Head Damascus Road conversion on Coal. – Here he is spruiking ‘clean coal’ in the citizenship test changes he introduced . Dutton is hoping people will forget that the English test for prospective citizens includes ‘politically charged’ questions on coal

Then Immigration Minister Peter Dutton announced that changes to the citizenship test would include a “stand-alone English test involving competent reading, writing, listening and speaking”.

The reading task contains a passage that appears to be in favour of “clean coal”.

The passage is accompanied by the following questions:

Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie described the exercise as “beyond belief. It is completely inaccurate and inappropriate,”. The section included “politically charged, incorrect, biased subject matter that has completely suspended any notion of the truth”.

The cut-thru with the Liblings is very simple. Everything they do is ‘campaign’, and their campaign at all times and in all places is calculated to defile Labor. Read their statements. Listen to their words. Not a chance is spared. Everything they publish is a pretext for anti-Labor expression. Everything. They are an anti-Labor gizmo. That is what they are for.

I just read the Green dental policy and it doesn’t say anything about Shorten or Labor, it only says something about the government- which at the moment is the Liberal National Coalition (as far as I am aware).

“Billionaire developer Harry Triguboff has launched legal action against the NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and a handful of government bodies barely a week ahead of the state election in a bid to have a controversial unit tower in Sydney’s north approved.”

“It is understood Mr Morrison made a forceful pitch to recruit Mr Kaldas at a face-to-face meeting the week before last, and in subsequent phone calls.
They discussed the former cop’s national security credentials, particularly in light of the possibility that Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton will lose his marginal seat of Dickson at the election.”

Dutton must be really pleased that Morrison has such great faith in him retaining Dickson!

Seems to me that their vote has become pretty well established as to its composition.

Around 80% who vote Green will preference ALP ahead of Coalition. And, from a Greens voter its where they preference ALP vs Lib that is pretty much thier vote on who they want ot be the party of Govt.

So, only 20% or so of Greens voters prefer the Coalition as the party to form Government.

And, Greens voters seem to me to be engaged enough so that how the Greens structure their HTV cards / preference deals doesn’t seem to make any difference. Thats probably to do with the Greens voters being, in general, from a well educated demographic who like to make up their own minds??

Ok, the Greens have i think done some damage over the years. I have not yet forgiven them for voting down the Rudd CPRS which led into the chain of events that made Abbott a relevant opposition leader….but may do one day………becasue i am such a nice, reasonable, and non-tribal person…….. 🙂

But, would like to see them, at least for now, more focused on getting rid of the arsewipe useless Muppet Show that are the Coalition than taking pot shots at the ALP. Not to say they need to be vassals and lackeys. O fcourse they wont be and if they tried that it would actualy be damaging to the “left” over all. But…in terms of the Environment and most Social issues it is the Coalition that are the enemy of most of the Australian population, and we have immediate and urgent problems that need workable, not necessarily perfect solutions…NOW.

There’s been major demolition work going on at Allianz Stadium despite a court appeal being heard tomorrow. The stadium is slowly being torn down sparking outrage from campaigners trying to save it. Report on 7 News at 6pm.

Matthew Campbell says:
Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 4:33 pm
I just read the Green dental policy and it doesn’t say anything about Shorten or Labor, it only says something about the government- which at the moment is the Liberal National Coalition (as far as I am aware).

The announcement asserts that Labor doesn’t ‘really’ support Medicare. It’s a furphy.

“Boerwar says:
Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 4:36 pm
The Red Devils strike again.
A second prang has occurred during ‘testing’ for the ACT light rail.
The rumour is that the train went through a red light and hit a car at an intersection.”

Is that the incident last Saturday where a trainee driver has been stood down after apparently going through a red light? There was no collision as the Uber driver stopped in time.

What amuses me about the Greens is their constant capacity to delude themselves that they actually make a difference.

Labor makes its own policy. It does so in the real world.
It does not need The Great Announcers to do this.

ATM the Greens have policies that will shut down Olympic Dam, shut down the cotton industry and to turn the ADF into a Light Mobile Force.

Now, there might be perfectly good reasons for all these policies and for dealing with the inevitable economic wreckage that immediately ensues, but the Greens are so fundamentally dishonest about their policies that they are still denying the real world consequences of their policies in these sorts of areas.